The Other Side of the Moon: The Data Problem in Analyzing Growth Determinants

Replication of two recent studies of growth determinants shows that results are sensitive to the choice of data from which growth rates are calculated, especially with respect to whether economic convergence has occurred. Previous warnings against using data that has been adjusted to increase cross-country comparability to study within-country patterns over time (growth rates) have been largely ignored at the cost of possibly contaminating the conclusions.